Your task? There is no task. Sometimes you just need to have time to freely create and ... scribble. Sometimes technology can get in the way of this process. How do you exploit the strengths of IM and minimize the weaknesses?
Who's in the group? (use a nickname if you like)
Jack Minsky
Nikki Minsky
Josslynne Welch
Darren Carstens
What did you talk about?
We talked about how great the crayons smelled and the waxy feel on your hands. Josslynne traced Nikki's toes and colored her toenails red. Nikki drew with a crayon between her toes. We scribbled. Jack drew a Warren-Fish. We talked about the difference between hanging a crayon drawing on the fridge and printing a computer generated drawing to hang on the fridge. Nikki was able to lay on our large paper and draw while on her belly - a different experience than sitting in front of a screen.
Nikki said she liked small pages better than the large white board. We drew smaller boxes for her to fill in. The noise that the crayons made on the ridges in the board and the way those felt as the crayon went bump, bump, bump over them provided an experience hard to match on screen. Nikki drew with two crayons at once, one in each hand -- not something we could think how to do with a single mouse computer input. You would need to have a touch screen to accomplish that. The sounds that real crayons make dropping on the board was giggle-inspiring in a way that the computer can't match -- as did digging in to the crayon basket with both hands, digging them out like fists-full of worms and letting them cascade across the boad.
Crayons break and change shape as you use them.
Clean up involves more than a click of a button.
Nikki and Josslynne collaborated on an underwater scene -- Josslynne drew a fish and Nikki drew the seaweed. Hard to imagine how that could be done on a computer screen -- neither the collaboration nor the ongoing conversation about the design and story about the underwater world as it was evolving.
Clean up was not nearly as much fun as the drawing.
There is also something about the permanence of working on paper - in our digital age we're used to deleting unwanted photos or erasing mistakes - once you put crayon to paper what you've created is unchangeable and you must work with what you have.
Coloring
Your task? There is no task. Sometimes you just need to have time to freely create and ... scribble. Sometimes technology can get in the way of this process. How do you exploit the strengths of IM and minimize the weaknesses?Who's in the group? (use a nickname if you like)
Jack Minsky
Nikki Minsky
Josslynne Welch
Darren Carstens
What did you talk about?
We talked about how great the crayons smelled and the waxy feel on your hands. Josslynne traced Nikki's toes and colored her toenails red. Nikki drew with a crayon between her toes. We scribbled. Jack drew a Warren-Fish. We talked about the difference between hanging a crayon drawing on the fridge and printing a computer generated drawing to hang on the fridge. Nikki was able to lay on our large paper and draw while on her belly - a different experience than sitting in front of a screen.
Nikki said she liked small pages better than the large white board. We drew smaller boxes for her to fill in. The noise that the crayons made on the ridges in the board and the way those felt as the crayon went bump, bump, bump over them provided an experience hard to match on screen. Nikki drew with two crayons at once, one in each hand -- not something we could think how to do with a single mouse computer input. You would need to have a touch screen to accomplish that. The sounds that real crayons make dropping on the board was giggle-inspiring in a way that the computer can't match -- as did digging in to the crayon basket with both hands, digging them out like fists-full of worms and letting them cascade across the boad.
Crayons break and change shape as you use them.
Clean up involves more than a click of a button.
Nikki and Josslynne collaborated on an underwater scene -- Josslynne drew a fish and Nikki drew the seaweed. Hard to imagine how that could be done on a computer screen -- neither the collaboration nor the ongoing conversation about the design and story about the underwater world as it was evolving.
Clean up was not nearly as much fun as the drawing.
There is also something about the permanence of working on paper - in our digital age we're used to deleting unwanted photos or erasing mistakes - once you put crayon to paper what you've created is unchangeable and you must work with what you have.